


and I have to speculate (did god himself make us into corresponding shapes)

by gabrielgoodman



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Sharing Clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 12:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20693195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrielgoodman/pseuds/gabrielgoodman
Summary: “You can wear one of my shirts, they should fit. You’re small enough anyway,” he says, and then his mouth snaps shut and his cheeks burn as if they are kids in a hammock again and he just said something he shouldn’t have. Well, he shouldn’t have said it anyway, but he’s 40 now so hereallyshould’ve known better.-eddie wears richie's shirts. that's it.





	and I have to speculate (did god himself make us into corresponding shapes)

**Author's Note:**

> based on [this](https://lelelego.tumblr.com/post/187763358187/boyfriend-shirt-boyfriend-shirt-boyfriend-shirt) fanart by lelego.
> 
> I don't really know why this happened except that I'm a sucker for classic tropes and the reddie height difference in the movie. Also, this is sort of an apology for my other, sad reddie fic. 
> 
> The zebra wallpaper mentioned is a real thing, and Mark Ronson has it in his house. There's a video of it on youtube if you wanna check it out, it's awesome.
> 
> The joke/anecdote Richie tells at the end of this is a mash up of a popular John Mulaney bit and _that_ part in the movie and I don't know what to think of it but I've been agonizing over it for far too long so here you have it. Don't commission me to ever _write_ jokes, they only really work if you imagine them in Richie's voice anyway. 
> 
> I'm not a native speaker and it's been a while so apologies for any mistakes beforehand. I'll come back to always fix things as things go.
> 
> title: such great heights - the postal service

It’s more a thing of convenience than anything else and that’s how it starts. Eddie is finally released out of the hospital and his chest is bandaged so thickly that he can only wear one of his hoodies zipped up even though he keeps complaining about how _sloppy_ and _inadequate _he is looking, Richie can’t keep the stupid smile off his face because Eddie is alive, he’s alive, he’s breathing and he’s moving and he’s going home with Richie, he’s coming home with him to his house in upstate New York that he bought in a flight of fancy. When he thought he could have, like, the life everyone wants with a picket fence and all, or maybe he just wanted some place where he could be left the fuck alone. LA is too polluted and too crowded and too hot, and Eddie seems like he’d rather eat chalk than move to the west coast

Now, it is oddly convenient.

Eddie grows tired of the hoodie as soon as he’s inspected the whole house for any kind of death traps or allergens lingering, moving slowly but thoroughly and holding on to the walls if he has to. In the middle of divorce proceedings and after more than a month in the hospital, there is not much clothing he has and given his size and his annoying habit of wearing meticulously fitting clothes, they won’t fit over the dressing of his chest wound, and so Richie opens his mouth to speak before the thought has been fully formed and processed.

“You can wear one of my shirts, they should fit. You’re small enough anyway,” he says, and then his mouth snaps shut and his cheeks burn as if they are kids in a hammock again and he just said something he shouldn’t have. Well, he shouldn’t have said it anyway, but he’s 40 now so he _really_ should’ve known better.

Eddie glares at him or does his best impression of one. Richie is so familiar with it, like a secondhand memory of someone else that he’s been privy to for god knows what reason, until he realizes it’s his own memory, the sensation of deja vu that hasn’t quite caught up with him yet because it takes a long time to unearth years of memories that were locked away by a demonic clown entity. Or whatever It was. Not that Richie cares about the fucker except that he wouldn’t mind crushing his heart again.

He helps Eddie up the stairs and shows him the bedroom, ears turning red as they stand in front of the bed, his bed, _their _bed, and he’s a grown ass man, he’s about to be middle aged (_horrifying_)_, _he’s got shoulders like a quarterback and he killed a fucking clown, and yet here he stands and the tips of his ears flush red and he hopes Eddie isn’t paying attention to it.

“I like it. Except the yellow zebra wallpaper, dude, that’s ugly as shit.”

If Eddie wouldn’t be on medical watch and like, sick leave, Richie would shove him for that comment. Instead he squeezes his shoulder lightly, where he knows Eddie won’t mind to be touched – he doesn’t mind to be touched by Richie in general he’s been noticing ever since they’ve met again and his heart surges at the thought – and pats his back in an entirely friendly manner, to not hurt him.

“The zebra wallpaper is so cool, you should see it in forest green in the downstairs bathroom,” he replies. “Looks sick as fuck. I also got a discount on it.”

He grins and Eddie laughs, wincing and stopping short, almost doubling over from the pain. Richie’s smile falls off his lips and is replaced by an expression of worry, something he can’t stop anymore because the rest of his life is apparently going to be spent in a constant state of worry. That’s fine with him but he’d also like to wrap Eddie up and never let him leave the bed again for multiple, partly entirely selfish reasons.

The thought whirls around in his head for a few seconds too long so he turns to dig through his closet (ha) and find something suitable for Eddie to wear which turns out to be a Fleetwood Mac shirt that he bought ages ago off some vintage seller. It looks cool, a faded 80s print and it will undoubtedly be too big for Eddie but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? He can wear it comfortably over the dressing of his wounds (_all that fucking blood spilling all over Richie, the crack in his lenses and his favorite yellow shirt, his jacket too, while his head was pounding and his eyes felt like they were about to fall out of his head, and Eddie, so clear, so happy, ecstatic and then all that fucking blood, a hole in his chest, his blood coating Richie’s face and skin and clothes and_ –)

Fuck, he needs to breathe.

“Hey Rich, you okay?” Eddie’s voice comes to him as if through thick layers of cotton and wool and Richie’s white-knuckled grasp around the fabric of the shirt loosens.

“I’m fine,” he croaks, turning around and smiling at Eddie. He can see the top of the layers of bandaging peak out from beneath his zipper and he is not paying any attention to it, instead he watches the puckered scar on Eddie’s left cheek from where Bowers stabbed him, and then his gaze move back to his always wide eyes. He smiles, holding out the shirt for him.

“I think this should fit, I have a pair of pajama shorts for you if you don’t have any – I, uh. Don’t need them.”

Now it’s Eddie’s turn to blush and Richie is grown up enough to do him the favor of not commenting on it but only because Eddie didn’t say a word about his own rush of blood to the head earlier. But he takes the shirt and Richie inhales gratefully because it is out of the world now, it’s been done, Eddie will be fine and that’s all that matters and not that his skin feels spread too thin over his bones whenever he thinks about the prospect of Eddie wearing _his_ clothes – not cradling them while in the lair but actually wearing them – while they’re in bed together. Living with each other.

Eddie is recovering, he reminds himself, and that should be his priority. It is, really, but there is something to be said about repressing your sexuality for forty years only to be confronted with it headfirst while facing the prospect of death at the hands of a cannibalistic murder clown. Actually, Richie is pretty sure there’s a lot to be said about that but he’s not sure if he’s paying his therapist enough for that; at least she upped the dose of his lexapro.

He helps Eddie change into the shirt because he can’t lift his arms higher than whatever in fear of pulling the stitches, and Eddie being Eddie he is double careful because why the fuck not. Richie told him to not bleed out on his seriously high-thread count sheets because that would ruin the bed so teamwork it is.

Only when the shirt is on and draping over Eddie’s small frame, Richie is paying attention again. As expected it is way too big on him, two sizes at least or more but the loose neckline shows off his collarbones, the edges of them at least, and the base of his throat, and he looks – dwarfed in it, almost, but also – Richie’s heart is beating hard and fast against his ribcage as if to remind him that oh, yeah, this is _Eddie _and he shouldn’t be calm for a second about this. There’s a clear outline of the bandages beneath the fabric but other than that, it looks kind of normal, kind of okay, kind of like Richie doesn’t wanna see Eddie in his own boring clothes ever again. He has so many fucking shirts, Eddie can wear them all.

The sleeves pool to Eddie’s elbows because he is really little. Richie swallows.

“Dude,” Eddie says, “Fleetwood Mac? _Really_?”

Richie sucks his cheeks in and smiles. “Yeah, really,” he replies, “I wanna be with you everywhere, Eds.”

*

So, the bandages come off but Eddie doesn’t stop wearing his shirts anyway. He has an ugly scar on his chest and back now from where It impaled him, another smaller, almost unnoticeable one on his cheek where Bowers cut him, the one he spends more time agonizing about in front of the bathroom mirror than he should. He’s still handsome to Richie who is mostly glad that he carried him out alive and they made it to the hospital in time, snarling and yelling at the others to not even _dare_ leaving Eddie alone down here. This might be one of those things he’ll never forgive them for but that’s okay, they all get it.

It’s well into October when Richie is sitting in his downstairs living room and typing away on his laptop. He’s got a new deal with Netflix that sounds promising enough, two specials to be released within the next four years, and he’s recently fired his writer because fuck it, he’s always been funny. He can be funny on his own and the people will love him, it’s what put him on the map initially after all, back then he used to write all his own material. Of course he kept it deliberately vague but whatever, he’s different now, he’s got an audience actually paying to see him because delirious people exist everywhere. Pretty sure everyone that enjoys his comedy is delirious.

The creaking stair announces Eddie well before he can say a word, and Richie turns because he’s prone to being startled easily these days.

“Fuck, _dude_. You scared me,” he says in lieu of an actual good morning and against his dry throat all of a sudden because Eddie is standing at the foot of the stairs with a bedhead, in dark blue shorts and Richie’s old Talking Heads shirt. It’s tucked into the waistband of his pajama pants on the left side so it doesn’t appear too long but it still gives Richie a fucking headache.

“Sorry Rich,” Eddie smiles apologetically and steps towards the direction of the kitchen he never really uses but Eddie finds delightful. He’s still moving slower than usual, like someone pressed a button and put Eddie in normal-people-speed and not his hyperactive fumbling. It’s weird to look at to be honest but Richie is getting used to it for the time being, like the cold feet under the blanket and brewing coffee that is way too strong for his delicate Los Angeles palate.

“What are you doing?” Eddie asks while he’s busying himself with the coffee maker. It’s good because then Richie doesn’t have to look at the way the loose neckline of his shirt exposes Eddie’s shoulder and the tattoo on his arm. Who knew Eddie got a tattoo? _Teenage Recklessness_ he called it but Richie can’t remember a time when Eddie had it, so he must’ve gotten it after they all moved away. It’s paradoxical given Eddie’s fear of like, needles and shit but maybe it was therapeutic for him. All Richie knows that there is the one and unlike himself, Eddie isn’t very enthusiastic about it.

“Writing,” Richie answers, wondering if it’s bad that he’s remembered every part of Eddie so he wouldn’t even have to look at him to know or see. “My own material for my new show.”

Eddie makes a noise and then he appears in his point of view again to join him on the couch, tugging his knees up to dig his feet into Richie’s thighs in a way that he knows will annoy Richie in approximately five minutes but also makes him sort of fond. “Don’t you have a writer for that? Like, I always knew because you know, but –“

Richie interrupts Eddie before he can get too far ahead of himself, “I fired him.”

“You – _what_?”

How Eddie’s eyes seem to get even wider, about to jump out of his head is some great comedy and maybe noteworthy for later.

“I fired him, he didn’t write really good material and I figured, y’know, with you and .... with me, I wanna ....” He takes a deep breath because this has given him more sleepless nights than Edward Kaspbrak’s asleep body next to his. “I wanna be honest. Completely honest. Nothing to be afraid of anymore.”

Toes press into his thighs and when he looks up from Eddie’s bare feet to his face, he’s met with a soft and earnest smile. His stomach somersaults.

“You wanna ...?” Eddie motions with his hands and Richie remains unimpressed.

“Do I wanna come out, Eds? Yeah, yeah, I think I do. I will with this new program anyway.”

Eddie seems grateful, for what he doesn’t say but he doesn’t have to say anything because Richie can read it out of his eyes and the crooked corner of his lips and the shirt bunching around his stomach when he’s sitting down, one sleeve rolled up and the other almost covering his elbow, the way he relaxes against the pillows on Richie’s expensive couch, how he doesn’t have anywhere else to go but to stay here. Richie wraps his hand around Eddie’s ankle and leans forward, keeping his balance with one hand coming to rest next to his hip, and he’s mindful to not hurt him so Eddie’s legs just fall open for him to fit between. When he’s close enough to bump his nose against Eddie’s and he hasn’t moved back yet or pushed him away, Richie’s brain is catching up with him and there’s a ringing in his ears while his fingers feel suspiciously numb.

“Nothing to be afraid of anymore,” Eddie whispers and curls his hand around Richie’s neck in a surprising display of strength, pulling closer and erasing the last inch between them, to kiss Richie on the lips.

Richie makes a noise he is not proud of, something between a gasp and a sharp inhale, but then he kisses back. It’s something warm and delicate without any haste and just for the two of them, and Eddie is eager for it in ways Richie could have never imagined in his wildest dreams; his hand slides into Richie’s curls at the back of his head and Richie’s comes up to grasp the side of Eddie’s face, thumb reassuring on his cheekbone, and his mouth pliant and open. He tastes like espresso and the hint of his toothpaste and mouthwash lingering, and he smells like he rolled straight out of bed, the scent of Richie’s laundry detergent all over him, and he’s breathing against him, and it’s heaven. Richie kissed boys before, men too, not often but enough to compare, and they all fall short to this.

His knee digs into the couch cushion and his other hand pushes his Talking Heads shirt up to touch the warm expanse of skin exposed by it, Eddie’s pale and warm skin that he’s spent years yearning to touch, a wave of longing crushing into him belated that makes him bite into Eddie’s lips because he is trying to muffle what could be a sob. There’s no reason to cry. He claims Eddie’s lips in another kiss, a little more urgent than the first and they find a rhythm with each other, trying to figure out what works best but it’s like riding a bike. Somehow, Richie never unlearned how to love Eddie with ever fiber of his being.

He wonders what took them so long.

When they pull apart, Eddie is grinning. It’s maybe the first time Richie has seen him at ease and happy since Derry.

“Thank _god_ I’m getting divorced.”

They both laugh.

*

It somehow becomes a habit. Eddie tries himself through Richie’s whole shirt collection, including his short sleeved button ups with the fun colors and patterns, and he only complains mildly about his taste in clothing which is refreshing given that the poor zebra wallpaper gets daily death glares. It’s certainly more exciting than Eddie’s personal array of endless polo shirts and suits and ties though so Richie just metaphorically puts his feet up and enjoys the view as much as he can.

Turns out it’s a lot, and he loves Eddie out of those obnoxiously long shirts even more than in them, beautiful as he is. Richie is not self conscious about his sexuality or his looks because he trusts Eddie and he wouldn’t wanna do this with anyone else, but he’s aware that they’ve both been waiting for this longer than they’d like to admit. Now, he can’t stop kissing Eddie every chance he gets, when they wake up in the morning and he will press him back into the sheets, take his time, over coffee and gross displays of domesticity, in the backyard in between lugging baskets full of firewood inside (Richie) and commenting on the sanitary standards of gardening (Eddie) or in the hammock he has strung up inside since it’s gotten too cold.

Richie has been steadily writing on his new program, bouncing ideas off of Bill whenever they have one of their weekly phone calls and he’s stuck or feels like he’s being _too _honest. Some parts he can’t share with Eddie because they’re meant to be a surprise or he’s too close, too personal, and they’ve shared enough intimacies to last a life time already, and besides, this is work still. But whenever he’s writing a joke about Eddie he runs it by him and what he approves of ends up in the script and what he doesn’t like gets trashed immediately; it’s the kind of easy and effective way of working he can bear in between therapy sessions, making sure Eddie is recovering well, juggling his agent’s demands and keeping up with the losers.

They have a group chat now full of disgustingly adorable couple selfies and the occasional dog picture and maybe, every now and then, a picture of Eddie at home, where he’ll be wearing one of Richie’s shirt.

For the sake of his own sanity, he doesn’t read the replies of his friends.

*

“_So, I come out of my bedroom and there I see the ghost of the dead victorian girl standing and I think, fucking hell, my mom must’ve bewitched me. She was right all along, we’ve _always_ had a ghost and it’s been following me around all these years. How many hook ups has that thing seen? Creepy but not totally implausible, right? I’ve had worse. Like that one time during school assembly when – never mind. The demonic clown chasing me around a miles deep sewer system is high up on that list, believe it or not, I pulled my fucking groin muscle like an idiot during that chase but what can I say, do I look like a frequent runner to you? Yeah, didn’t think so. So, I get a fucking heart attack as you do and then I turn on the light and it turns out, it’s only my boyfriend wearing one of my shirts. You’d be surprised by _how_ little he is, would make a great sacrifice, fits on a barbecue and all, basically has been that height, yup, since seventh grade. You can’t blame me for mistaking him for the ghost of a little victorian girl._”

*

It’s the middle of the night when he makes it home from the airport, having driven the past few hours upstate because he simply couldn’t stand the thought of another night in some hotel room, another night away from Eddie when he was only one and a half mixtapes away from home. As always he didn’t count in the nightmare that is New York City traffic but you get what you give and so he simply texted Eddie to go to bed and not worry about it, he’d be home in a few hours and they would wake up together after two months on the road and a hundred late show appearances. Richie has never liked that part of his job, the talking to hosts and answering their questions about him, but his agent insisted given that his show would be filmed at Radio City soon and after his fanbase has been steadily expanding due to his coming out.

Oh, yeah. He _did_ that, released a press statement and all and went onto Seth Meyers to talk about it properly, like he’s some kind of actual celebrity that people care about and maybe, they do just a little. Even more so after his outing. Complete strangers tweet him and write emails and shit about how he helped them accept their own sexuality and while he’s deeply honored he’s always has had a hard time to put it into words because it’s a fuckton of responsibility that he’s not ready for. He can’t even keep a house plant alive (Eddie can though).

So, he’s been ushered around like a show pony from east coast to west coast to play venues bigger than he could have ever imagined; it’s incredibly grounding to be a little spec on a big stage but it’s also completely unbelievable to look out into a seemingly endless sea of faces that all paid to come and see his new, self-written program. He’s basically made daily adjustments, and the parts that hit solidly stayed and what tanked pretty early on, even after the stand up gigs in little bars in Brooklyn, got scrapped. It has to be perfect for Radio City, he’s been reminded at every corner, and he hopes it is now; he put in the work at least.

Bill and Mike came to see the gig in Florida and let him stay for two days to show him around their new place, and for the big night in New York all six of them plan to reunite.

He didn’t play a single date in Maine by personal request because some things better stay unearthed and he’s not quite sure if he’ll ever be able to set foot back in that state. It’s much better to keep his distance these days to all that stuff, or, at least, to the parts he doesn’t want to share with the world. If he wakes up at night soaked in sweat and on the brink of hyperventilation then only Eddie knows and only Eddie can calm him down again, assuring him that they’re okay, that he’s okay, they’re safe. Flickering lights and paparazzi make him anxious these days, more than ever because they trigger him, a primal reaction that he doesn’t have under control yet unless he is medicated. It’s a weird thing to adjust in this new life and something he wishes he wouldn’t have to do but if his career keeps steadily rising the way it does now, then he’ll be confronted with it more often.

The house is dark and quiet when he makes it through the front door, the smell of whatever Eddie had for dinner lingering in the air when he passes through the living room to the stairs, and his eyes have adjusted enough that he doesn’t miss a step or bangs his knee against the wall. He puts his bag down quietly in their bedroom and checks for Eddie – asleep, his body a small lump beneath the sheets, chest slowly rising and irrational relief floods him – before he makes his way to the bathroom to shower the airplane off his body and get ready for bed.

While he’s staring at his tired reflection in the bathroom mirror as he’s brushing his teeth, his mind keeps going back to Eddie in their bedroom and how much he’s missed him in the past weeks. It turns out that being on the road isn’t as fulfilling anymore as it used to be and yes, while still being totally great, it’s not the same when he’s reminded of the fact that Eddie is home alone without him. Richie misses him like he’s making up for thirty years of not being able to miss him, in a way where phone calls and text messages don’t suffice anymore, but Eddie has a job to do, he can assess risks from back home apparently, and he’s still seeing the doctors regularly to make sure he’s alright. Richie knows he can’t take him on tour with him but he wants to because sometimes the loneliness is worse than anything else.

How did he do this for 27, 40 years?

He pretends to not notice the unhealthy circles beneath his eyes and to finally crawl into bed once he’s done with his routine, because it sounds as sweet as spring and he just wants to bury his nose in Eddie’s hair and inhale what he couldn’t for so long. Of course he’s only half as graceful than he should be because he’s still Richie fucking Tozier so he stumbles over his bag and hits his toe on the bed frame, trying to curse under his breath but failing spectacularly and sure as shit Eddie is waking up if the movement beneath the blanket is any indication.

“Rich? Is that you?” he croaks, voice heavy and sleepy and Richie shushes him.

“Shhh, yeah, I’m back home babe, just – just go back to sleep.”

“What time is it?” Eddie groans as Richie finally gets under the blanket and immediately wraps his arm around his middle. He’s wearing another one of his shirts, he notices, and it makes him smile when he kisses the back of Eddie’s neck.

“2.30-whatever am. Traffic was fucking hell so it took me ages to get here,” he murmurs his reply, burying his nose in Eddie’s hair. “Sorry, I tried to be quiet.”

“it’s okay,” Eddie mutters and wraps his arm over Richie’s, intertwining their fingers, and Richie could cry because he is so happy, so calm, so _whole_ and he’s searched for this for more than forty years; he shouldn’t be surprised he finally arrived only when he found Eddie again, should never question it anymore.

“You’re home now, that’s what matters,” he whispers, already falling asleep again, but this time he’s falling asleep in Richie’s arms, like the shirt he’s wearing isn’t enough to envelope him and it isn’t, because Richie is gonna make sure Eddie remains unharmed for the rest of their lives. If that entails having him wrapped up in his arms then so be it, he’s made greater sacrifices before, sacrifices he doesn’t really think of anymore because they hurt so much.

“Yeah,” Richie breathes out. He doesn’t feel like running anymore. “Yeah, I’m home.”

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on twitter @ richardrmadden


End file.
